Review of K. Noel Moore, “A Song for Hardy Connelly”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Moore’s “Song” is divided into three parts, telling the stories of Hardy, Saraid, and Moïra, all linked to each other through blood but separated by their experiences.
Hardy Connelly was born Deaf, and a childhood bout with Guillain-Barré Syndrome left her legs weak and in need of artificial support. Those who don’t know her pity her:
Poor thing, they said. Cursed she must be. That’s no worthwhile life she’s living.
But if Hardy is cursed, it’s not because of either her Deafness or her weak legs. It’s because she’s a Connelly, a descendent of the Ò Conghalaighs who
had meddled with something from the Other Place that wasn’t meant to be meddled with,
and as a result, both Hardy and her aunt, Moïra, have the same golden eyes that herald the second sight.
I found this story hard to follow and a bit disjointed. Saraid’s relationship with Hardy and Moïra is never made clear, and I didn’t understand how her central section related to the bookending sections of Hardy and Moïra. It was also not clear to me what the titular song was — whether it was a component of the stories, or whether the three rather prosaic sections were to be understood as being a song.
I liked the way the story engaged with Deafness, particularly the different communicative valences that came into play. I did find it a bit strange how the speech via sign language was depicted, though: Both Hardy’s (who is fluent in sign language) and Moïra’s (who is not) signed speech is rendered into written speech with an a-grammaticality and unexpected sentence structure. I wish I knew more about sign language to know if this is a mirroring of the syntax of sign language, or if Moore was trying to indicate something else with this technique.
SFF Reviews 